For those of you who work with Middlebury colleagues, from LIS to HR, please note the following message from President Ron Liebowitz regarding some upcoming changes in the location of various offices.
While we may not be impacted much by the changes in location, please be sensitive to the dislocations that some of these offices are coping with in the coming months.
Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues,
As many of you are keenly aware, we have coped with a shortage of office space on campus for a number of years. This has placed some groups into suboptimal spaces and caused others to divide their staff across multiple locations. At times we have felt constrained when starting new initiatives, and we’ve lacked sufficient swing space to accommodate faculty and staff during building renovations.
I’m pleased to say that we are addressing this issue in the coming year. Middlebury has signed a lease to occupy the entirety of an office building at 700 Exchange Street, between the Post Office Annex and Vermont Sun. This nearly 22,000-square-foot building will provide us with high-quality, flexible space for staff whose work does not require them to be on campus at all times. In turn, we will be able to make better use of our campus space in general.
We approached the decision to lease the new building with several goals in mind, foremost among them:
· Increasing available office space on campus
· Rationalizing and uniting department office locations where possible
· Opening up more space in the Davis Family Library for faculty and student interaction and curricular technology, including the activities of CTLR
· Constructing a new, much needed Middlebury data center to replace the one in Voter Hall
· Increasing available space for students and student organizations in McCullough Student Center and other locations.
· Creating new space for videoconferencing and video broadcast facilities
The addition of the newly renovated 700 Exchange Street facility will allow us to accomplish most of what we set out to do, and in some cases much more.
In Phase 1, in late spring or summer, 700 Exchange Street will become home to the Office of Advancement, three significant teams from LIS, and the new Middlebury Data Center. Advancement will be united in one location for the first time in three decades. The new data center will be a significant upgrade from the current facility in Voter. The LIS groups moving into 700 Exchange Street will be Central Systems & Networks (networks, servers and storage), Security, and Enterprise Applications (Banner, enterprise systems and web applications).
In Phase 2, which will begin over the summer:
· Budget and Finance staff will move from the Service Building to the Marble Works (currently occupied by Advancement).
· Most Human Resources staff will move from the Service Building to Painter House in downtown Middlebury (also currently occupied by Advancement). A smaller number of HR staff who interact frequently with faculty and staff will remain on campus in a new location, the house 161 Adirondack View.
These moves will empty the second floor of the Service Building and allow us to reconfigure that space as necessary. Once done, in Phase 3 of the project, the second floor of the Service Building will become home to The Dean of Students Office (moving from McCullough Student Center), the Human Relations Officer (moving from DKE Alumni House), and the Center for Careers & Internships (moving from Adirondack House). This will bring together three important offices that interact frequently with our students. The floor also will house two dedicated, state-of-the-art video facilities–one for videoconferencing and the second for television video broadcasting. The cashier’s office will move to the first floor. As part of this phase of the project, we expect to rename the Service Building and create a more inviting approach and entrance.
The move of the Dean of Students Office from McCullough will create additional space in McCullough for student organizations. (The Student Activities Office will remain in McCullough.) In addition, Adirondack House will serve as the offices for one or two academic departments. Those planning details will be worked out in Phase 2 of this project.
I realize that these changes will create short-term disruption for some departments and in a few cases will require significant adjustments in how people work and collaborate. But the overall benefits to Middlebury are significant. When complete, this series of moves will greatly ease the campus office crunch and leave us with pockets of free space we can use flexibly when necessary.
There is a lot of work to do in the months ahead to prepare for these changes. I encourage you to communicate and work with your managers to discuss how we can carry this out with a minimum of disruption and to ensure that we continue to work together effectively. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the vice president responsible for your department. As the dates for the individual moves approach, we will provide more detailed information.
Thank you in advance for helping to make these moves as seamlessly as possible.
Best,
Ron